


Mystery Play

by HarveyWallbanger, MillicentCordelia



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Amputation, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gratuitous amateur theatrical productions, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Well almost everyone, everyone lives!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 21:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillicentCordelia/pseuds/MillicentCordelia
Summary: The shadow is cast!  The shadow is cast!





	1. Pelops' Shoulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MillicentCordelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillicentCordelia/gifts).



> This is a story by me, Harvey Wallbanger, for Millicent Cordelia, based on original ideas by Millicent Cordelia. Happy winter solstice!  
> The quote in the summary comes from the song Mask, by Bauhaus.  
> While the violence in the story is probably tamer than that which appears in the show, please use your discretion, Dear Readers.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Time has slowed down for you. Or maybe, you’ve slowed down for time. One of those. You don’t know which. Everything takes you such a long time to do, now. It feels discordant when others complain: you know that it’s taking you a long time, but you can’t change the way that time moves around you. You certainly can’t make yourself any faster. If you could, you would; not for others, though, but for yourself. To again be yourself, as you knew yourself. People must know this- the rest is certainly obvious enough. It must be that knowing that makes it so difficult for them to understand. The knowing must be horrible. You know all about that.  
Sasha throws open the curtains. The sunlight is like being pierced by a spear of ice: almost instantly destroyed by you as you destroy it, but still painful!  
“Ow!” you yelp.  
“Wake up, Charles,” she huffs, “It’s almost two.”  
“So?” You know that you’re whining, and you hope that it’s as annoying to Sasha as it is to you.  
“You can’t just lie around here all day.”  
“I’m an invalid!”  
“It can’t be that bad,” she snaps, then more softly, “Anymore.”  
Slowly, you force yourself up onto your elbows. “Oh, yes, it can,” you say. You don’t even try to sound angry. Anger, you’ve learned, doesn’t suit you. When you try to be angry, you just end up feeling cheated: it’s so much work for nothing.  
“I’ll call Harold to help you,” she says, already beginning to look disgusted. Before you can reply, she leaves the room.  
Harold is the ancient valet, a relic of the house’s former life, when Sasha’s husband’s parents were alive and had a staff of ten. When they died, Sasha’s husband let most of them go. He could drive his own car, and do his own laundry. Harold had given his whole life to the parents, though, and, well, it wasn’t as though he took up very much space. The grandparents were long dead. This was like having a hired grandfather. Someone to play chess with, someone to tell you what it was like, before there was television.  
“Good morning, Mr. van Dahl,” Harold says.  
“Hi, Harold. You don’t have to call me that. It makes me feel like I’m at the DMV.”  
Harold laughs. It’s real when Harold laughs, you think. “Trouble with the leg, today?” he asks. Harold was wounded in the leg in some war or other. God only knows what Sasha tells everyone about your leg. Probably some boring story about a car accident. She could make up something really good. She could tell people that it was eaten by a wild animal.  
“Yes. Could you bring me my cane?”  
Harold brings it over.  
“That’s good. Thank you. That’s all I really needed.”  
Harold bows his head a little, then leaves. You don’t need anyone around when you put on your leg, even Harold, who’s probably seen a lot worse. People get so weird about things like this. They try to make you ashamed, because, somehow, they’re the ones with the shame. Shame at not having to suffer like you’re suffering, shame at being relieved about that, shame at looking at you differently. You’ve given up caring what it’s really about. Your body has become ultra naked. Now, parts of your body have to be added to it, like clothes, to cover the nudity that not even you can live with. Sometimes, you think that if you really thought about what had happened to you, you’d start screaming and never stop.  
That’s enough of that.  
You get dressed. You work your way downstairs. Sasha’s having lunch, marking the hour by transitioning from the morning bloody Mary to the afternoon glass of wine. She may not be live-in anymore, but there’s still a cook, thank God. She comes to the table, and asks you what you’d like. Whatever is around, you tell her. You’re trying to be helpful, but this seems to make her nervous. Whatever Sasha is having, you say. She smiles, and returns to the kitchen, the door swinging behind her.  
“I heard something interesting today,” Sasha says.  
“Oh, what’s that?” You pick up the bottle of wine, and study the label. “Côtes du Rhône”. That means absolutely nothing to you.  
“Cobblepot got himself sent to Arkham again.”  
“What for, this time?”  
“Killing a little boy.”  
A tickle of chill runs up your back. You pour yourself a glass of wine. Shit. You forgot your pill. The pain isn’t there yet, but it’s coming. It’s never not coming. You fill the glass to the top. “That’s not very interesting,” you say, drinking your wine.  
“Oh, yes, it is. It means that the house is empty. Now’s the time to make a play, take it back.”  
“What for? That place was a dump.”  
“It’s not a dump; it’s valuable real estate. Which is to say nothing of what Elijah was supposed to have stashed there.”  
“Sasha, we lived there for ten years. If there were a secret treasure, we probably would have found it.”  
“There are rooms in that house that we never saw,” she says, “Grace always told us specifically to stay out of them. Why do you think that was?”  
“Who knows? Why did Grace do anything? It was probably some scheme of hers that she never let us in on.”  
Sasha whispers, “She knew what was in those rooms, and that it was valuable, and that was why she panicked when Cobblepot appeared. Elijah could have dropped dead at any moment, which meant that we’d get nothing.”  
“So, what makes you think that we’d have any right to it, now?”  
“Our situation has changed,” she says, sitting up straight. Oh. She means that she has her husband’s money, now, and her husband’s lawyers.  
“Why bother? You’re already rich.”  
“Because, Charles,” she hisses, “if you think I’m going to continue to support you for the rest of your life, you have another thing coming. Jeremy’s going to want kids one day, and when he does, I can’t be expected to take care of you.”  
“Just pay me off, then, and get rid of me.”  
“No,” she says, her lips drawing in tightly like Grace’s, “I still need you. No one ever found Grace, or any evidence that she just left town or something, so she’s almost certainly dead. We both need to present ourselves as Grace’s children, her rightful heirs. The will was never changed, so she would have still inherited. If we show the world what Cobblepot did to you, that the only reason we left behind our home, our property, is because he threatened our lives, then it all makes sense. If you’re living in the house, you can poke around, look for money, or jewelry, or stock certificates, or whatever Elijah had.”  
“Do I have to?”  
“Yes, Charles. You have to.”  
“Fine,” you sigh, “But you’d better find me a doctor in Gotham. I’m not coming all the way back here to get my prescriptions.”  
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, of course, Charles.”  
“And I want a driver. And a personal assistant.”  
“Obviously.”  
“And you have to give me money. If it turns out that there’s nothing there, I don’t want to starve to death.”  
“You’ll keep your allowance.”  
“Fine.” You take a long drink. “Let’s get it over with, then. Talk to Jeremy, arrange it with his lawyers, and just take me over there.”  
“Good,” she says, you know, not a little relieved. As difficult as Sasha can make life for you, you can make life just as difficult for her. She might be able to take away your present, but you’ve always had the power to take away her future. Or give it to her. Give her everything. Of course, she remembers. How could she forget? When the evidence is an absence, and you’re walking around on it.  
That night, right on schedule, you have the stupid dream again. It’s barely a dream. It’s just a memory you can’t escape, because you’re asleep, so you can’t turn on the TV, or have a drink, or take your medication, or ask Harold to tell you about the days when he fixed trucks in Metropolis for a couple of years before coming here and becoming a valet. The words Cobblepot says are slightly different each time you have the dream, making more or less sense, but you always know exactly what he means.  
“Which one of you wants to be Long John Silver?” he asks, showing far too many teeth.  
Sasha understands first, and looks at you with an expression so horrible you won’t even think about it in the daytime. That’s the worst part, how afraid she is. Because you’re stupid, you don’t understand, so you aren’t afraid, or you’re not more than the normal level of afraid for someone being threatened with a meat cleaver.  
“Huh?” you say. You probably said this when it happened, but you don’t remember that.  
Then, Sasha explains it to you, and you automatically look at her legs. She’s wearing tights with polka dots, which was such a stupid, childish thing to do, and you know that when she put them on this morning, she couldn’t have possibly imagined this. She’s crying, her mascara’s running, and it looks so bad. She looks really bad when she cries.  
“Tom Collins me,” you tell Sasha.  
“No,” says Cobblepot, “Sandpaper dry,” which is such a good line, and you hope that you remember it.  
You lie down on the kitchen table. Sasha’s holding your hand. She’s holding it too tightly; she’s hurting you. She laughs when you tell her to loosen her grip.  
Cobblepot grins. “On the count of three,” he says, raising the cleaver, “One…” you take a deep breath, and let it out, “Three!”  
Sasha screams.  
The pain is so gigantic that it’s like a living thing. You could hold it in your arms. You’re dreaming, in the dream, of holding it. It’s a very, very soft black cat that purrs as you touch its fur.  
You wake up, but you know that you aren’t really awake. You don’t feel anything. You can’t stop shivering. Someone says that you have ants in your pants. You see your own leg, covered in ants.  
Now, you’re awake. You realize that you were sobbing. Your throat aches. You take your pill, even though you don’t know how long it’s been since you took it last. In the dark, your hands find the bottle as though it were part of your body. If you O.D., Sasha will be sooo pissed. Lying back down, you laugh, tears and snot running down the back of your throat.  
When you go back to the house, maybe you’ll get a cat. In the morning, you’ll tell Sasha that you demand a cat. A black cat. Softer and darker than a dreamless sleep, who purrs and purrs under your hand until the morning.


	2. Widow's Weeds

On a simply practical level, he hates to be bearer of bad news. It’s just not good for one’s health. On an aesthetic level, it offends him. If there’s bad news, it means that something has gone wrong. Things only go wrong when there’s a shirking of duty, somewhere in the universe. If only all could do what was required of them. Then, no one would suffer.  
Taking a deep breath, he raps gently at the door.  
“Come in,” she says, and he enters her office.  
“Ms. Falcone,” he begins.  
“What is it, Penn?”  
He frowns. Would it physically hurt her to call him ‘Mister’? “I’m afraid that I have bad news.”  
“What?”  
“As you may or may not be aware, the original occupants of Oswald Cobblepot’s home, in which you’ve expressed interest since he was sent to Arkham Asylum, have materialized. Long thought dead, it appears that they were alive and well, living upstate.”  
“And? They left.”  
“That’s what makes it so complicated. As the children of the wife of Elijah van Dahl, Mr. Cobblepot’s father, they have a legal claim on the house. While she hasn’t yet surfaced, as her heirs, they can contest any other ownership of the house. The circumstances of their disappearance, in fact, strengthen their claim.”  
“Which are?”  
“They say that Mr. Cobblepot...” he looks down. This is unpleasant. “They say that Mr. Cobblepot cut off the leg of the young man, Charles van Dahl, and then threatened to kill him and his sister, Sasha, now Sasha van Meegeren. They were forced to flee, and never again saw their mother, Grace van Dahl. They fear that she might be dead, possibly buried somewhere on the property.”  
“Get out,” Sofia says, and he’s happy to do so.  
Later, she calls him back in.  
“If they want an investigation, give them an investigation. Talk to the GCPD. Get detectives in there with dogs,” she waves her hand to elaborate, “ground-penetrating radar, whatever they use. Tell them to take as long as they have to.”  
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and leaves to make the calls. He doesn’t think anymore; he just does. When your gifts aren’t appreciated, you keep them to yourself. You’d almost let them atrophy, out of spite- but you love what you do, aside from being good at it. This is the only true love. Anything else will betray you.  
He does paperwork. At noon, he brings her her lunch before she tells him that she has an appointment, and unceremoniously dismisses him. When she leaves the office, he eats her lunch, himself. Waste is a terrible thing. He does more paperwork. He makes more phone calls. He stays until the job is done. He goes home.  
She wants him to supervise the investigation of the van Dahl house, which of course is not his metier, but he’s happy to do it. It gets him away from the Falcone house. It gets him away from her. It gets him away from the three unpleasant women from the Iceberg Lounge, who appear with both unnerving frequency and irregularity. If there were a schedule, he could prepare himself, but there isn’t one. So that, at any time, he might find himself face to face with that monster with the whip. He was lucky, he supposes, that he has a good dental plan.  
It’s a homecoming, of sorts. After that strange theft at the licensing office, Mr. Cobblepot had installed Penn there, in one of the many disused bedrooms. The bed had come out, and a desk and filing cabinets had gone in. There, Penn had spent a long month recreating the stolen list from memory and other records.  
“You’re lucky you have such a good memory,” Mr. Cobblepot had said, not even threateningly. Had he been impressed? Yes, Penn allows himself, he had been impressed.  
The police officers don’t require much supervision. They’re forensic technicians. They have a neat set of duties, in which there is no allowance for deviation. How Penn envies them! The collection of evidence takes less than a week. Their survey of the property reveals nothing conclusive. When the tests come back, they reveal even less. It is all displeasingly ambiguous: it could certainly be warped into creating the picture that Sofia seeks- whatever that is- but what’s the point? A lie is so much easier. What she wants with the house, she doesn’t say, and Penn steadfastly refuses to ask. She can compel him to speak, and if she does, he will, but until then, he’ll remain silent.  
“Oh, well,” she says sunnily, when Penn tells her of the latest development, “I’ll just buy it from them.” Then, she tells Penn to get out.  
Charles van Dahl is allowed to return to the house. There’s a brief write-up about it in the paper. Barely more than a blurb.  
“I want you there,” Sofia says.  
“In what capacity?”  
She smiles. Penn winces. “You’re a servant,” she says, “Serve. He’s advertising for a personal assistant. Present yourself, and give me as a reference. Refuse to take no for an answer.”  
He swallows. That night, when he can’t sleep, he looks through his grade school atlas. In illustrations, the north looks as vast and empty as he knows it to be. A place of forgetting, and eternal sleep, like death. A soft, merciful death that wipes clean all that might pollute a man.  
If he sleeps at all that night, even that is forgotten. When he wakes, it’s with the feeling of shifting awareness: he was always awake, but in a slightly different way. He makes himself presentable, and Sofia’s car picks him up. It’s a long drive into this part of the city. Many think that it’s another locality, but it’s actually still Gotham. Gotham is rich in its variety. All kinds of life flourishes here.  
Penn walks up the drive, and knocks at the door. After several minutes, no one has appeared. He rings the bell. He continues to wait. He looks at his watch. He looks at the car. He rings the bell again. Finally, there comes a series of sounds behind the door, and it opens. A young man leaning on a cane looks Penn up and down.  
“Who the hell are you?” he asks.  
“My name is Mr. Penn. I work for Ms. Sofia Falcone. Might I come in?”  
“No,” the young man snorts. “Why are you here?”  
“My employer heard that you were looking for a personal assistant, and she sent me here to present myself for the position.”  
“Why?”  
“Ms. Falcone is aware of the unspeakable injury you endured at the hands of Mr. Cobblepot. She’s no stranger to his viciousness and cruelty, and wishes to aid you. The van Dahls are one of Gotham’s oldest families, and Ms. Falcone has great respect for tradition. It would mean a lot to her if she could create a bond between her family and yours.”  
“Falcone… the gangster?”  
“While it’s true that Ms. Falcone’s father did have a variety of business interests, some of them illegal, her interests lie solely in legitimate business and charitable causes.”  
“What can you do?”  
“My background is in accountancy, record-keeping, office management, research and fact-checking, inheritance and business law. My greatest quality is my adaptability. I’ve worked in a variety of environments, and enjoy the challenge of new situations.”  
“Have you ever worked for someone with health problems?” He looks significantly at his cane.  
“Before Ms. Falcone...” what to say? “… took me on, I did work, briefly, for Mr. Cobblepot.”  
“Really.”  
“While I didn’t attend to him in a medical capacity, I was acquainted with the particulars of his situation.”  
“So, you could, like, hire people? If I needed a cook, you could find me one?”  
“Yes. Certainly.”  
“Good. I need a cook. I need a doctor, too. I need a chauffeur.”  
“When shall I start?”  
“Now? I guess?”  
“If it would make life easier for everyone, I would be amenable to living here.”  
Charles’ eyes narrow. “You want to live here?”  
“As a way of better filling the role of assistant.”  
“You want to sleep here?”  
“Yes...”  
“Are you coming on to me?”  
The look on his face must be one of particular horror, because Charles apologizes profusely. “I’m drunk,” he says with a helpless shrug. “You should come in, I guess.”  
“Please allow me to tell the driver.”  
“You need to go home, I guess, to get your things.”  
“I can send someone to get them.”  
Charles shrugs, already going back into the house, the door left open behind him. Penn tells the driver, and watches him go. The relief he feels when the car finally disappears fills him like something he ate. He is revived.  
Closing the door behind him, he goes inside. He’s glad that he brought a small bag. He takes out a notebook and a pen. Charles moved in a week ago, and nothing has been put away. He needs a housekeeper. A cook, he said, and a chauffeur, as well. A doctor.  
“Do you know any detectives?” Charles asks. He now has a glass in his hand.  
“Police detectives?”  
“No. Private detectives.”  
“I can certainly make some calls. What would you like to have investigated?”  
“My mother. I think she’s dead.”  
“All right.”  
“The police were here. Before I could move in. They said that they searched the whole place, and didn’t find a body, didn’t find anything. They sort of looked for her, before, when she disappeared, but I don’t remember a lot about that time. Anyway, they obviously never found her.”  
“I will find you a private investigator.”  
“Good. Thanks. Say, what’s your name?”  
“Mr. Penn.”  
“Is ‘Mister’ your first name?”  
“No. I just prefer to remain on professional terms.”  
“Okay. Sure. Just don’t call me Mr. van Dahl, okay?”  
“What shall I call you, then?”  
“Just call me Charles. At my sister’s house, they called me Mr. van Dahl, even the guy who used to help me out of bed sometimes, and I hated it.”  
“All right.”  
Charles laughs. “It was so stupid, because van Dahl wasn’t even my father. He adopted us, sure, but I was, like, ten. Before that, we were the Burkes. That guy wasn’t my father, either. Every time Grace got married, it was like we got married, too. Van Dahl was the only time that it was official, for us. With the other guys, she just told us to call ourselves by a different last name. Was your dad your dad?”  
“I’m not sure what you me- Oh, was my mother’s husband my father? Yes, he was.”  
“Were you close?”  
“He wasn’t a demonstrative man, but I believe that he loved me.” Why is he telling Charles this? It should be mortifying. In defiance of the feeling, he makes himself give more. “He was a minor patron of the arts; his family had a box at the opera. He and my mother met at one of the Wayne family’s events- at the opera, actually.”  
“What did they do?”  
“My father was the office manager at one of Carmine Falcone’s businesses. My mother was a Ph.D. candidate when they met. She went on to get her doctorate in art history. She was a researcher at the Gotham Museum of Modern Art.”  
“Wow. My mom was a waitress.”  
“That requires its own set of skills. Memory, coordination, time-management, social savvy.”  
“Yeah. I guess. She hated it.”  
“I don’t doubt that it was difficult work.”  
“I don’t want to talk about this. Do you want a drink?”  
“Should I not start making calls?”  
Charles makes a dismissive motion with his hand. “Later.”  
“I meant to say earlier that I can provide you with references.”  
“Don’t worry about that. You don’t look like a serial killer or a con man.”  
“Well, one drink would probably be all right.”  
“What do you want? I’m having a Tom Collins. Do you know who Tom Collins was?”  
“No. I’m afraid I don’t.”  
“I don’t, either. It’s probably not a real guy, like the lady on the box of frozen pizza.”  
“I’ll have one, too.”  
“Good. It’s the only drink I know how to make. I used to want to be a bartender, but my memory’s for shit.”  
Penn sips his drink. It’s light and fizzy and astringent. It’s a drink for a summer evening, not a winter morning. It strikes a discordant note. He takes a coaster from the bar, and puts it under the glass on the dining room table.  
“I’ll just start making those calls...”  
“You didn’t finish your drink.” Charles sounds sad when he says it.  
Penn continues to sip. The drink is more potent than it initially seemed. He lets himself become inebriated. It’s not entirely pleasant. Taking medication after his dental work has made him wary of mind-altering substances. His emotional equilibrium was compromised. He wasn’t sure that he knew himself anymore. The ice cubes rattle at the bottom of the glass. He sets it down.  
“I’ll make you another,” Charles says brightly. He opens a can of mixed nuts, and shakes some into a small bowl. “Here,” he hands the bowl to Penn, “You can sit down, if you want.”  
Sighing, Penn sits, cautiously chews some pecans, his hand instinctively pressed to his jaw. Charles maneuvers himself into a chair across from him.  
“Why were you working for Oswald?” Charles asks, taking him by surprise.  
“Originally, I worked for Carmine Falcone. I was one of his accountants. When Mr. Cobblepot took control of Mr. Falcone’s former holdings, I was part of the transfer of assets. By the time Mr. Cobblepot initiated his crime licensing scheme-”  
“I heard about that,” Charles muses, “On one of the all-day news channels.”  
“Upon its inception, he placed me in charge of record-keeping.”  
“What happened, with him and the kid?”  
Penn takes a longer drink than he’d intended. “That is a tragic story.”  
“Okay.”  
“Upon returning to Gotham, Ms. Falcone aligned herself with a number of charitable organizations- all legitimate causes- but her signature concern was child welfare. Working swiftly, she opened the children’s home that bears her name. She and Mr. Cobblepot quickly became friends, so he was often at the home. It transpired that he took an interest in a particular little boy, Martin. I don’t know exactly what happened, but at the end of it, Martin was dead. There was a terrible explosion, in a car in which Martin was traveling; out of Gotham, it was assumed. Mr. Cobblepot was subsequently found guilty of having planted the bomb, with the intention of killing Martin.”  
Charles frowns. “Well, why the hell did he do it?”  
“That, no one knows. At the preliminary hearing, he was found unfit to stand trial.”  
“Were you there?”  
“I was unwell at the time, and thus, could not attend.”  
“Do you think he did it?”  
It’s a logical question to ask, but it surprises Penn, chills him in a place that the alcohol can’t reach. He takes another long drink. “I don’t know.”  
“I think he did.”  
“Why do you think that?” Why does he sound like he’s pleading with Charles?  
“He cut off my leg.”  
Of course, Penn knew, but he still finds himself chilled by surprise. To hear it said aloud is a very cold, very hard thing. “He cut off-”  
“He cut it off. In the kitchen, over there-” He turns, and points. “On that table. My sister was there. He said that it was our choice which one of us he, y’know,” Charles makes a chopping motion, “but that one of us had to, oh, what did he say… give our pound of flesh, or something like that. I woke up in the hospital. Sasha was still alive, she was okay, but neither of us ever saw our mother again. That’s why I want the detective. If she’s dead, there has to be a body, somewhere- or, at least, someone has to know something. If she left town, if she’s still alive, I want to find her… ask her… ask her why she didn’t look for us.”  
“I understand.”  
“Anyway, so you can, um, do that whenever you want. There’s no rush. If she’s dead, she’s not getting any deader. If she’s alive, she’ll probably hear that Oswald’s back in Arkham, and come back on her own. Maybe she doesn’t want to come back. Maybe she found a rich man, like Sasha, and got married again. He was my doctor, you know.”  
“Who was...” His limbs feel loose, barely held on. His head feels soft and heavy.  
“Sasha’s husband, Jeremy, was my doctor, Dr. van Meegeren. He did the surgery. They had to fix up the wound, remove part of the bone, stitch me up. He did a great job. I’ll show you, if you want.” He reaches for his right knee.  
“That’s quite all right.”  
Charles shrugs. “I was in a coma for a few days. I lost a lot of blood. They had to transfuse me. Then, I developed an infection, so they had to give me all kinds of antibiotics. I guess that he and Sasha had a lot to talk about. I don’t know when they started dating, but after I had my last follow-up, they made it official. They got married really quickly. I guess that Sasha knew a good thing when she saw it.”  
“She’s very lucky, being married to a surgeon.”  
“Oh, he was already loaded. His family’s been here for, like, five hundred years. They probably made their money doing something horrible. If you go back far enough, everyone’s family is full of criminals. If you’re rich enough, you can just pretend that the criminals are ancient history. You said that you do research?”  
“Er, yes. What interests you?”  
“I’m writing a novel- or, I was. I want to get back to it. Could you help me?”  
“I would be happy to. Are your searches concentrated in any particular place? University libraries, halls of records?”  
“I want to learn more about the van Dahls. The family I’m writing about is sort of based on them. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to come back here. There’s all sorts of stuff here- photo albums… shit like that. I don’t get around that well, so I really wanted an assistant to help me look through the stuff.”  
“I could certainly aid in that capacity.”  
“Good. Look, I’m tired. You actually woke me up, so… I’m going to go to sleep. Call whoever you have to, if you feel like it. If not, do it tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Penn.”  
“Shall I walk you to your room?”  
“Sure. Thanks.”  
Gingerly, he helps Charles stand and maneuver away from the table. Charles moves much more easily than he thinks, and doesn’t actually need support, but he’s unsure. It must be, Penn thinks, that what he truly fears is losing his balance. As they walk upstairs, Penn holds out his hands, in case Charles should tumble in any direction, but he stays vertical. Charles is very brave, Penn decides, for coming to live in a house with so many stairs. He sees Charles into his bedroom.  
“Can I do anything for you? Would you like a glass of water?”  
“No,” Charles says, lying down, “I’m good. Just don’t wake me up, okay? Like, if I don’t come down for two days, you can assume that I’m dead, but otherwise, just let me sleep?”  
“If anyone calls, I’ll take a message.”  
“Thanks. Good night.”  
“Good night,” Penn says quietly, and closes the door behind him.  
He waits an hour to ensure that Charles is fast asleep, and to allow himself to sober up a bit. Then, he calls Sofia. He tells her what’s occurred. Is she pleased? He can never tell. At least she isn’t displeased. She’ll send someone with Penn’s things.  
“Take down this number,” she says, and he looks for a pad and pencil. God knows where his notebook is.  
“Whose is it?”  
“That’s the detective, for Charles.”  
“What is their name?”  
“It’s Harvey Bullock.”  
Penn wants to gasp, but he doesn’t let himself. “Very good,” he says, and asks if she has further instructions.  
“No,” she says, and hangs up.  
He doesn’t ask for much in this world. Politeness is less than nothing. It costs nothing, and enriches both the giver and receiver. Suddenly, he’s fantastically nauseous. He barely makes it to the guest bathroom in time.  
In the kitchen, he finds a box of crackers. He pours a glass of seltzer water from the bar. Considering the circumstances, he’s sure that Charles would forgive this liberty. When his stomach stops revolting, he calls Harvey Bullock’s number.  
“Mr. Bullock,” he begins, taking a long breath, “my name is Mr. Penn, I worked for-”  
“I know who you are,” Bullock says in a rough voice, “What the fuck do you want?”  
“My new employer is a Mr. Charles van Dahl-”  
“Van Dahl? As in Penquin’s father, van Dahl?”  
“Yes. Charles is his step-brother.”  
“Huh. I heard they weren’t dead.”  
“No, Mr. van Dahl, and his sister are very much alive. The matter of their mother, Mrs. Grace van Dahl, is still open. What Mr. van Dahl would like is to learn the ultimate fate of his mother.”  
“Since she’s not buried in the backyard at the van Dahl place.”  
“No, the police investigation found no evidence of foul play.”  
“But you think she could still be dead?”  
“That is what no one knows. Neither sibling has seen their mother, alive or dead, in more than two years.”  
“Yeah. Fine. I’ll do it. Do you want to come to my office, or do I come to you?”  
“I have to discuss that with Mr. van Dahl. I’ll get back to you within the week.”  
“I’m in no hurry. So, you’re working for the van Dahls, now? The word around town was that Sofia Falcone grabbed you up with Penguin’s office furniture.”  
“That is true. Ms. Falcone sent me as a show of good will to Mr. van Dahl. She has a great interest in Gotham’s history, and the van Dahls are one of its oldest families.”  
“That, or she wanted to rifle through Penquin’s naughties, and your guy just beat her to the punch.”  
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”  
“Yeah, Penn. It’s just a coincidence that when she couldn’t find a way to get the house out of seized assets, the GCPD were in there, looking for God knows what. Now, this guy shows up, with a legal claim on the place, thanks to his sister’s husband’s lawyers, and she takes the opportunity to send her flunky by as a ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ present.”  
“I assure you, her intentions are above board.”  
“You’re lucky I’m morbidly curious enough to want to see how this one ends.”  
“We appreciate your help immensely, Mr. Bullock.”  
“Yeah. Okay. Call me back when you know whether Lord Fauntleroy is going to show his face in my office, or if I have to bill you for a two-hour drive.”  
“I will. Thank you, Mr. Bullock.”  
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and hangs up.  
Penn can’t quite function. It’s been an unexpectedly difficult morning. He allows himself the pleasure of tidying up the entryway, unpacking some of the boxes left by the movers and putting away the things that Charles might not need immediately. Late in the afternoon, Sofia’s driver arrives with two suitcases of Penn’s clothes. He leaves them in the parlor. When Charles wakes, Penn will ask him where he’s to sleep. Penn continues tidying into the evening. It’s dark when Charles comes downstairs again.  
“I took the liberty of retaining the services of a private detective. His name is Harvey Bullock-”  
“Tell me over a drink,” Charles says, and Penn follows him into the dining room. As much as he doesn’t want to, he accepts Charles’ offer of another Tom Collins. “What do you want for dinner? I usually just get take-out.”  
“Whatever you like. Tomorrow, I will look for a cook, as well as the other domestic help you require.”  
“Cool. So, what about the detective?”  
“His name is Harvey Bullock. Up until recently, he was the captain of the GCPD.”  
“Why’d he quit?”  
“He retired. Due to health concerns.”  
“Yeah. Sure.”  
“I’m to call him back to tell him whether you’d like to meet him at his office, or if you’d prefer that he come here.”  
“Oh. Shit. I don’t know. What do you think?”  
“It might do you good to go into the city for a day. Of course, first, I’ll have to contract a chauffeur. It all depends upon what you feel up to.”  
“I don’t want to think about this right now.”  
“We can discuss it whenever you’re ready.”  
“Great. I’m going to call the Chinese place. What do you want?”  
“Whatever you’re having will be fine.”  
Dinner’s pleasant, and thankfully, uneventful. The ice melts in Penn’s drink, diluting it, so it doesn’t have the same catastrophic effect of the earlier two. After dinner, Charles shows him to a vacant bedroom, and Penn leaves his suitcases there. They stay up late, looking at photo albums in the library.  
“How much money do you think I could get for all this stuff?” Charles asks.  
“All what?”  
“This… like, the furniture, and stuff.”  
“I can look into having it appraised, if you’d like.”  
“Thanks. I hate looking at it.”  
“Yes, I’d imagine that, being young, your tastes would be more modern.”  
“You have a nice way of saying things.”  
“Thank you.”  
“I mean it.”  
“Thank you very much.”  
“You’re welcome, Mr. Penn.”  
Then, Charles is tired, so they stop for the night. He sees Charles to his room, and then Penn goes to his own room, this strange room, in this strange house. He’ll put away his clothing tomorrow. In this bed, as wide and flat and cold as the tundra, Penn feels like he’s far away from everything he knows. He’s so far from everything that he might as well no longer exist. It’s like being dead, without the inconvenience of dying. In the dark, he smiles.


	3. Open Casket

No one really dies in Gotham. They just get a change of address. Change of scenery. Change of job title.  
Harvey was right- it feels like a hundred years ago that he said this- he didn’t have a drinking problem; he had a GCPD problem. It’s easy to stop drinking. It’s easy to no longer want it. What is everyone always complaining about? His severance package goes to his creditors, so he’s obliged to start working again, broken down old wreck that he is. Yet- he’s not ready to retire. There’s still something left for him to do. What it is, he doesn’t know, but it’ll reveal itself soon enough. Wherever they are, wherever they’ve flown to from whatever other place, there’s no rest for the wicked in Gotham. They’re all wicked, so no one gets any rest.  
The only thing that almost, almost makes him want to start again is Dix’s death. It’s such an obvious trap that he’s tempted to let it close around him: one drink, shared with a ghost. It turns into the whole bottle, and then, you’ve become the ghost. Then, you can’t remember what you did without it. Then, you’re really Dix- dragging yourself to hell and back through every shitty thing you’ve done, every stinging failure, so that it’s like he never went anywhere. Of course not- no one in Gotham truly dies. Then, you’re calling Jim- not at work, but at home- spitting and swearing, while begging for your job back, while vowing revenge. It’s not Harvey’s style. Or, it’s so much his style that’s it not his style. Jim’s like any other addict: a taste is too much. Calling him to curse him out is like tossing a syringe catalog at a junkie. It feels like it should be revenge, but they’re just getting off, and you know it. There’s no way of beating them except by cutting them off. If Jim wants attention, he can call a phone sex line. If he wants help hating himself, he can look in a mirror. Fuck this. Harvey has a job to do.  
In the end, van Dahl makes him drive all the way to the big house. Rich people. When Harvey gets there, he’ll shake the change out of Penn’s pockets to pay for the gas.  
The door’s answered by a bored-looking woman in a black uniform, who regards Harvey from beneath half-mast lids.  
“Come this way, please,” she says, and closes the door behind him. She shows him into a study or library or something, where Penn waits with a kid who barely looks old enough to be crossing the street by himself. Penn stands. The kid doesn’t. That’s when Harvey notices the cane next to him. Of course, he thinks of Dix. It would be strange if he didn’t. He looks at the bar cart next to the couches and chairs. He sees the tumbler in the kid’s hand.  
“Mr. Bullock,” Penn says, “thank you for coming all this way.”  
“Thank me when you pay me,” Harvey says. The kid laughs, a surprised little huff.  
“This is Charles van Dahl. Charles, this is Harvey Bullock.”  
“Charmed,” Harvey says.  
“Do you want a drink?” Charles asks.  
“Cup of coffee, if you’ve got it.”  
“I will tell Mr. Cardin,” says Penn, and rushes away.  
“You can sit down, if you want,” says Charles.  
“Thanks,” Harvey says, and sits in the chair that Penn vacated. “So, tell me what I’m doing here.”  
“Didn’t Mr. Penn explain?”  
“Yeah, but I want it in your words.”  
Charles sighs, and tells, for what Harvey thinks must not be the first time, the story of how Cobblepot separated him from his leg.  
“I just want to know what happened to my mother,” he finishes.  
“Understandable. Can you think of anyplace she might have gone, if she were still alive?”  
“She’s originally from Blüdhaven- but I doubt that she’d go back there. Maybe she looked up family, though. Her parents died a long time ago, but she was sort of close with her father’s second wife, Louise Deville; she might still be alive.”  
“So, why’d Cobblepot snap?”  
“Well, as we told the police, we had no idea. When we discovered that he’d been in Arkham, we begged Elijah to send him away, but Elijah wouldn’t hear of it. Then, Elijah died suddenly, and I guess it sent Oswald over the edge. Oswald seemed to blame us. He was screaming his head off about betrayals, and how we had to pay.”  
“That certainly sounds like him.”  
“So, he said that we could choose which one of us it was.”  
“And you volunteered.”  
“Hell, no!” Charles laughs. “I don’t even remember saying anything. I just remember lying down on the table. He said he’d do it on the count of three, but he just brought the cleaver down on my leg. I remember Sasha screaming, and that was that. Sometimes, though, I dream about it. I dreamt about it last night, actually. He looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Arr, Jim, lad-- Them’s to die’ll be the lucky ones’. You know, like the pirate in that movie.”  
“Weird shit,” Harvey says. That’s when his coffee arrives, borne on a rolling cart by the same woman who answered the door. He’ll take it black.  
“Tell me about it!” says Charles.  
Harvey gives Charles his rates.  
“Sure. Fine. Work it out with Mr. Penn.”  
“You don’t think it’s weird, him coming to work for you?”  
“No. Why would it be weird?”  
“Sofia Falcone, Carmine Falcone’s daughter sends Cobblepot’s old secretary here to keep you company? The guy’s been around the block more times than I have.”  
“Who? Mr. Penn? I’m not a gangster, Mr. Bullock; why would any of these people care about me? If Sofia Falcone has some kind of grudge against Cobblepot,” he nods toward his leg, “that’s just fine with me? If she thinks that I’m somehow trying to help him, she’s wrong? If she just wants to, I don’t know, build society connections, or something, what do I care?”  
“These people never give you anything for free.”  
“Well, that’s what I’m saying. What do I have that she could possibly want? This house? Let her buy it from me. I’ll throw in the furniture. It’s gross. Look at it.”  
“I don’t know anything about antiques.”  
“Neither do I,” Charles makes a disgusted sound, “I feel like I’m in a tomb.”  
“No chance that old van Dahl’s death couldn’t have been such an act of God?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean, maybe Cobblepot didn’t just snap. Maybe he had a good reason for wanting your mother dead. I only ask because all kinds of things can come out in these kinds of investigations.”  
Charles shakes his head. “If my mother did do something wrong, and she died for it, she took that secret to her grave.”  
Gee, that didn’t sound rehearsed.  
“All right. If I didn’t warn you, I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence.”  
“Thank you,” Charles says brightly, and puts out his hand to shake. Harvey stands, and shakes his hand. The maid shows him out.  
No one, and that means no one, in Gotham dies. It takes a month of working vague leads- and even then, it’s a total accident. Harvey gets a call from an orderly he knows at Gotham General. A real piece of shit. But that’s show biz.  
“What do you know, Dave?”  
“I don’t know if this will interest you, but it’s definitely weird.”  
“Weird is my middle name.”  
“About six months ago- no, more- the medics brought in a D.O.A.-- well, glorified D.O.A.. As in, the lights may have been on, but no one was home. There was a problem with the admission papers, because they had two different names for him. One was… something Gold- anyway, that doesn’t matter. The other name was Butch Gilzean.”  
“So? One less scum bag clogging up the world.”  
“Well, this next part is sort of… illegal.”  
“I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t.”  
“Sometimes,” Dave sighs, “when it gets too crowded, we offload some of the patients- just the ones with no hope of recovery.”  
“Offload them where?”  
“The swamp.”  
“Jesus.”  
“The thing is, I spoke to someone not too long ago who swore to God that he’d seen Gilzean, walking around.”  
“What do you want me to do about it?”  
“Well, shit, Harvey- this is blackmail material. If he remembers what happened to him, he could, like, give you information. You take that to the hospital board, and… you know.”  
The death of Elijah van Dahl was before Penn’s time. Victor Zsasz isn’t going to talk, and Harvey’s not going to ask him to. Barbara Kean was around then, but Harvey’d almost rather talk to Zsasz. Cobblepot took Gilzean back awfully quickly, even after Gilzean sold him out to Galavan and got involved with the sister. Maybe Butch knew something.  
“Fuck you, Dave. Yeah. Fine. Meet me, give me your friend’s name.”  
“And you cut me in on anything you get from the blackmail.”  
“Sure, Dave.”  
“Plus a finder’s fee for this.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Cool. Thanks, Harvey.”  
Harvey hangs up. He lies down in bed, and sleeps the sleep of those with no care in the world but themselves.

Dave’s lowlife friend leads Harvey to some other lowlife, who leads him to a bar in the Narrows that’s shitty even by their standards, which leads him to fucking Edward Nygma of all fucking people, and of course, Harvey’s not surprised.  
“You’re like a bad penny, Nygma,” he says.  
“I could say the same for you, Harvey. No matter how hard you try to escape it, you always end up right back down here, face-down in the muck.”  
Harvey’s not the captain of anything anymore, so when he hits Nygma, he feels absolutely nothing. No guilt, no fear, no shame, no remorse- not even a tickle of conscience.  
“That felt good,” he says, because it did. If not actually hitting Nygma, then the wave of not caring that came with it.  
A drop of blood falls onto Nygma’s vest, leaving a black stain on the green material.  
“Rumor has it that you’re chummy with Butch Gilzean. Are you going to tell me where I can find him, or do I get to beat it out of you?”  
“Butch Gilzean is dead,” Nygma says.  
The first one was recreational; this one’s business. Harvey gives Nygma a second to pick up his glasses, and asks again.  
“I haven’t seen him in weeks,” Nygma says.  
“Well, that’s a shame,” Harvey says. Before Harvey can hit him again, Nygma holds up his hands.  
“Okay, okay. He came back here a week ago. He’d been fighting, under the name Solomon Grundy.”  
“What, he was a boxer?”  
“No. Illegal fights, anything goes. I was managing him. He said that I owed him money. I was able to buy myself some time, and he gave me a number to call when I had the money together.”  
“Call him.”  
“I don’t have the money.”  
“No shit. Let me worry about that.”  
Nygma smiles that nasty smile. “I helped you, right?”  
“You’re not done helping me yet.”  
Nygma’s smile fades.  
“Call Gilzean.”  
When Harvey sees Gilzean again, it’s a shock. What the fuck happened to him in the swamp?  
“Let it go, Harvey,” he says.  
“Yeah, fine.” He puts some money down on the table. “Half now, half when you tell me what I need to know.”  
Butch puts the money in his pocket. “What do you want to know?”  
“Grace van Dahl.”  
“Who?”  
“Penguin’s stepmother. She was married to his father, Elijah van Dahl. She disappeared about two years ago. Probably permanently.”  
Butch folds his arms over his chest. “Who wants to know?”  
“Her kids. One of them also lost a leg in the bargain, so anything you could tell me would mean a lot to them.” He puts more money on the table.  
Butch sighs. “This is really fucked-up.”  
“No shit. Spill.”  
“She’s dead.”  
“Yeah, I figured that out on my own for free.”  
“I saw the body.”  
“Go on.”  
“Oswald cut off her head. He used to keep it around the house. He’d dried it out, and he used it like a centerpiece, moved it from room to room during the day. At night, he kept it in a hat box. He drove around with it, for God’s sake. When he ran for mayor, though, he realized that it had to go. Her body was buried someplace else, on an old property of Fish’s. He had me take care of them.”  
“What did you do with them?”  
“I incinerated them in an industrial furnace where we used to take Don Falcone’s problems.”  
“So, there’s no evidence.”  
“If he held onto anything, I never saw it. As far as I know, there’s nothing left of this woman.”  
Harvey puts the rest of the money on the table.  
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Butch says, and stands.  
“By the way, Nygma doesn’t have your money.”  
“Don’t worry about that,” Butch says, and even with the gray skin and white hair, he’s suddenly Butch Gilzean again. They’ll be finding pieces of Nygma for weeks. When Harvey thinks about it, he feels nothing. He doesn’t have to.  
Charles takes it pretty well, even considering the details. Charles paid him too much for Harvey to leave anything out. It’s not kind, and it’s not cruel; it’s value for money.  
“I knew. Of course, I knew,” Charles says lightly, and drains his glass. He starts to stand, and Penn stands with him, but Charles waves him away. He’s lost the cane, so it takes him longer, but he walks over to the bar, and makes another drink. “Would you like one?” he asks Harvey.  
“I’m good.”  
He walks back to the couch with his drink. “In a way, this makes it easier,” he says as he sits, “There’s no grave to visit.”  
“You can look at it that way,” Harvey says. He hasn’t been to Dix’s grave. He’ll probably never go.  
Suddenly, Charles looks totally sober. “Thank you, Mr. Bullock,” he says.  
“Please don’t thank me for this.”  
“No. I mean it. It’s all over now. Thank you. Mr. Penn, could you show Mr. Bullock out, please?”  
“Of course, Charles. Mr. Bullock, if you would please follow me...”  
In the hallway, Harvey says, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Penn; you’ve done well for yourself.”  
“Yes, Mr. van Dahl is a very good employer.”  
“Better than working for scumbag criminals.”  
Penn’s mouth twists into a strange sort of frown.  
“So, tell me, why did Penguin do it?” Harvey realizes that he could be referring to anything.  
“I have no idea,” Penn says, with a real sense of helplessness. He could be referring to anything, too. “I truly don’t know.”  
There’s no reason to do this, ask Penn questions for the sake of watching him fumble for answers that aren’t there, not for him and not for anyone. “No. I guess not. A thing like that, no can really understand it.”  
For a second, Penn looks up at him- hopeful? Relieved? Grateful? Then, it’s gone. He clears his throat. “Thank you again, Mr. Bullock. Check your account tomorrow. If there are any problems with the wire transfer, or if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.”  
“Yeah. I know where you live. Good night, Penn.”  
“Good night, Mr. Bullock.”  
Then, Harvey’s out in the cold night air. He’s walking through it, cutting through it, to his car. The cold doesn’t stick to him. Nothing sticks to him anymore. All the same-  
On the way home, he’ll pick up some corner shop carnations. He’ll go to the cemetery. Tomorrow.


	4. A Body That Won't Quit

This is what it’s like to grow up, Sasha realizes. It means that everything you used to know as a kid necessarily has to shrink. The van Dahl house was always huge to her, when she was small. Now, though, she’s a married woman, living in a real life castle with three floors, rooms she hasn’t even entered in the year she’s lived there, turrets, and stables, a swimming pool with water that mimics the exact chemical make up the sea, vast grounds with their own park-- Well, she has everything.  
Van Dahl had nothing, she thinks with a sneer. He had her mother, and he had her and Charles, but his life was empty. Before they came, he was like a corpse rolling around in its own coffin. At the time, Sasha was so terrified to leave this place, that contained everything she owned, everything she knew. She hadn’t had time to pack a bag or even look for her purse. She’d wrapped Charles’ belt tightly around the remains of his leg, tumbled him onto a kitchen cart, and pushed him out the back door, down the path, to the road. She still doesn’t know how she did it. It was only much, much later that it struck her that she’d left behind his leg. Her memories are like photos ripped from a magazine, hastily pasted onto construction paper, wet hills of paste bursting through the dissolving paper. There was a gas station at the bottom of the hill. People’s eyes wide in their heads. Someone screamed. Everything disappeared. She woke up because something bright was in her eye. She sat up, and started screaming. Then, she sank back down into nothing. When she awoke again, she was in a dark, quiet room. There was a needle in her hand, and bandages on her feet. Suddenly, she remembered her ankle twisting, the crack that she felt more than heard. Her shoes had come off. She’d stepped on something sharp. It was like her feet were braver than her, though, or smarter, because they kept running.  
There was no one in the room with her, so she made herself think. Soon, people would ask questions. Whatever happened, she must not tell them about Oswald. Somehow, this was important. If she didn’t say his name, he… couldn’t see her. It was like he wasn’t real. If he wasn’t real, he couldn’t come for her. But her mother could still be alive! No. Sasha shook her head. Grace was dead. There are things that you know, without having to see any evidence. Time had to have passed. Days- maybe even weeks. There would be no body, no evidence, nothing. It would be as though none of them had ever existed.  
The poison!  
That was what he had said. “Your mother kept the poison, so now, one of you has to give something up.” Something like that. Oswald wasn’t the same anymore. He was smart, now. It was like a light had turned on in his brain, and now, he could see everything. He would have held onto the poison. They could dig up Elijah’s body, and match it to what he’d swallowed.  
She needed to think. She took a deep breath.  
Grace was dead. Sasha and Charles had been attacked, and fled the house days- if not weeks- earlier. It couldn’t have happened at the house. It couldn’t have been Oswald. If it was Oswald, then…  
No, that didn’t work.  
They had been kidnapped. The kidnappers called Grace. Grace brought the money to another location-  
But how had Sasha gotten Charles to the gas station so quickly-  
Unless Charles was dead.  
Charles could very well be dead.  
Sasha sighed.  
A long time ago, Grace had told her that it was always best to tell the truth, because you didn’t have to make up lies and remember them. Once you had to depend on your skill as a storyteller or your memory, you were fucked. There were, however, ways to tell the truth.  
Oswald had killed Elijah. Never mind why. He’d been in Arkham; he was crazy. He was jealous of his father’s new family. He’d killed Elijah, and he’d killed Grace. He’d tried to kill Charles, but he’d… slipped in blood, or something- no, he’d fallen, because of his bad leg- and Sasha had had time to run away with Charles.  
It was perfect. She was ready.  
But it didn’t matter, because by the time she was well enough to talk to the police, and they were able to get a warrant- it was all gone.  
“Nothing?” she said. Then, she remembered that she had already guessed this to be the case, and felt stupid because her outrage was real. “Not even Charles’ leg?” she blurted out, and instantly felt like a complete jack ass.  
“There was nothing there,” the police officer said gently, “Not even Cobblepot.”  
“Did you… dig up the garden?”  
“We couldn’t get a warrant for that. It was a plain-view search only. The place was a mess, but there was no body, no blood, no bloody knives, no guns.”  
“He killed them,” Sasha said, her lower lip trembling of its own accord, which even she had to admit was a fantastic touch. “He killed my mother and father,” she added unnecessarily, the corners of her mouth turning down. The police officer gave her a handkerchief. She sucked in a long, snotty breath. “I want to be the one to tell my brother.”  
Charles was still in dreamland at that point, so she had to tell him three different times. By then, she’d begun to notice Charles’ doctor, Dr. van Meegeren. Jeremy. Who she knew without being told thought that she was brave and kind, in addition to being young and beautiful. She made it understood that she was open to his interest. Really, she was doing him a favor: who did he see all day, but sick people? How was he supposed to meet women? If he represented the possibility of salvation for her and Charles, she represented the possibility of a whole lot more for him. She was love and sex. She was the future. There’s nothing more important.  
She hasn’t thought about this in a long time. She doesn’t like to think about it. She sold her past. She gave it away. She threw it into the sea as soon as she accepted Jeremy’s marriage proposal. The past doesn’t have anything she wants.  
Well, maybe one thing.  
As children, she and Charles weren’t allowed to go into certain parts of the house. “An old bachelor’s eccentricity,” Elijah had said. She’s beginning to think that it was just that. Charles has been here for months, and hasn’t found any hidden treasure. What Sasha wants, though, is worthless.  
The one thing that Elijah did for them was the costumes. He wouldn’t take them to the movies, or let them have parties at the house, or even buy a television set until they were already teenagers, but he did make the most wonderful costumes. Already being rich, he had nothing else to do all day but toil away in his studio, or whatever you call it for tailors. This was one of the rooms Sasha and Charles were forbidden from entering. This was where the costumes were born, and where they lived. They could be worn all day, but at night, they must return to the room. It didn’t matter how much Sasha begged as a child to be allowed to wear her fairy princess costume to sleep.  
“There’s no one to forbid me, now,” she says, even though there’s no one there to hear her, either.  
They’re still there!  
Of course they’re still there. Who would have disturbed them? Cobblepot wouldn’t have touched them; his father made them. If Charles even remembers them, he wouldn’t care enough to get rid of them. The staff wouldn’t touch them. Charles’ assistant, Mr. Penn, wouldn’t do anything about them unless Charles told him to. Yet, she’s surprised, but in a good way, to see them again. As a child, they transformed her. In them, she could be anyone. Some of them no longer fit, but the ones Elijah made when she was a teenager, for costume parties or school plays, probably still do.  
At dinner, she asks Charles if he remembers them.  
“Of course I do,” he says.  
“I want to take some of them home with me.”  
“Oh, but you know that they have to be locked safely in their room every night,” he says, wagging his finger. She giggles, and he laughs along with her.  
“It is a shame just to leave them in that room,” Charles muses. He takes a long drink from his glass of wine. “Would it be strange if I wrote a play, and we put it on?”  
Sasha shrugs. “I don’t know. For who? Like, in a theater?”  
“No, no. Here. We could invite our friends...” It’s then that he must remember that, growing up, they didn’t really have friends. Oh, they went to school, did school activities, but they weren’t encouraged to mix with the other children. The older they got, the less they did. When Sasha was nineteen and Charles was seventeen, Elijah fired the driver, and that was that. Even the occasional parties and outings were curtailed. Charles was old enough to legally drop out of school, so he did. Anyway, who was going to send a truant officer up to this place?  
“We could do it for Jeremy, and Mr. Penn,” she says.  
“They’d have to be in it, though. Otherwise, there are only two characters.”  
“How many does it need?”  
“Three.”  
“Well, Jeremy’s not doing it. He doesn’t even like receiving professional awards. Mr. Penn has to do it; he’s your assistant. What’s the play about?”  
“Why, how I lost my leg, of course.”  
“Charles, that’s sick.”  
“But it’s a fairy tale. Horrible things happen all the time in fairy tales, but you know that it isn’t real life.”  
“This is real life,” she says gently.  
Charles shrugs. “Not if I say it’s not. I’m the playwright; I get to decide what’s real and what isn’t.”  
“Keep talking like that, and they’ll put you in Arkham,” she teases.  
“I could ask Oswald for my leg back.”  
For a long moment, she can only look at Charles, open-mouthed. Then, he laughs. Oh. Oh, thank God. He was only joking. She laughs along with him. Oh, thank God. She’s safe. She’s safe, now.


	5. The Kingdom of Costume, Come

The house looks like a castle. That, or a tomb, Vanessa thinks, with equal parts bemusement and disdain. Who would want to live in a place like this?  
Gordon pounds on the door. Even from the outside, you can hear it echo within the house. A woman in a uniform answers the door.  
“GCPD,” says Gordon, “We have a warrant to search the premises.”  
The woman shrugs, and steps aside.  
“Where are the occupants?” Vanessa asks.  
“In the library. I’ll take you there.”  
Vanessa is able to stop herself before she says what she’s thinking, which is, “What the hell?”  
“GCPD,” Gordon repeats, “We have a warrant. Charles van Dahl?”  
The person wearing a Venetian mask that looks like the sun, golden and gaudy, takes it off. “Yes?”  
“Charles van Dahl,” says Gordon, walking toward the small stage. It looks, Vanessa realizes, like a puppet theater.  
“Yes?” repeats van Dahl.  
Gordon hands him the warrant.  
“Well, what are you looking for?”  
“It’s there in the warrant.”  
The person standing next to him removes his mask. It’s that of a plague doctor. “I will call your lawyer.” Vanessa recognizes him from the precinct. He used to work for Cobblepot. How did he end up here?  
The other person, who’s wearing a mask with a female face painted on it, a red-lipped smile and hearts on the cheeks, pulls up her mask, sits down, and lights a cigarette. She stands, and pours herself a drink.  
“Who are you?” Vanessa asks.  
“Sasha van Meegeren. Charles’ sister.”  
“Do you live here?”  
“Oh, no. I live with my husband. Our house is much nicer than this.”  
“Oh.”  
“He was actually Charles’ surgeon. He’s very good. If you ever need to have surgery, you should request him.”  
“I don’t think it works that way.”  
“Oh, right. We were both unconscious at the time, so I guess that Charles just got lucky.”  
“Unconscious when?”  
“When we arrived at the hospital. Charles, of course, had lost a lot of blood. I’d just fainted, or something. I don’t really remember a lot about that time.”  
“No. I can see why you wouldn’t.”  
Looking very far away, Sasha nods.  
The uniforms search the house, but there’s nothing left of Cobblepot’s operation. No lists, no files, not even an address book. Van Dahl’s lawyer arrives, and that’s the end of that.

A few days later, at the precinct, there’s a note from the van Dahls waiting for Harper. It’s an invitation to a “theatrical performance” at the van Dahl house.  
“Did you get one of these, too?” Vanessa holds up the invitation.  
“Yeah...” Gordon says slowly, then takes his out of his pocket.  
“Does this kind of thing always happen around here, suspects inviting you to places?”  
Gordon makes a face. “Not usually.”  
“Are you going to go?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“It could be some kind of set-up.”  
Again, Gordon makes a face. “I don’t think it is. These people don’t exactly look like criminal masterminds.”  
“Penn used to work for Penguin. There were always whispers about Elijah van Dahl’s death. No autopsy, family in a hurry to get him in the ground.”  
“There was no autopsy, because he had a documented pre-existing condition,” says Gordon, “They did a superficial examination of the body, and it looked like a simple case of heart failure. It was a fast burial because he’d said that he didn’t want his body to be embalmed.”  
Vanessa raises her eyebrows. “You sure know a lot about it.”  
“I did some digging,” Gordon says, with a peculiar tightening of his jaw, “Around the time that Cobblepot ran for mayor.”  
“You thought he’d killed his own father?”  
“No. That didn’t fit. The stepmother and her children disappeared not long after. That was what made me suspicious.”  
“You thought he’d killed them.”  
Gordon shrugs. “I was wrong.”  
“About the brother and sister, but the mother’s still among the missing. Maybe if we go to this thing, we’ll find something out.”  
Gordon frowns. “Maybe.”  
Vanessa smiles. “’Refreshments will be served’,” she reads from the invitation, “That sounds very fancy.”  
Unable to help himself, Gordon’s face relaxes a little. “Fine. But we’re there as officers of the law; not party guests.”  
“Of course. It says ‘and guest’. You could bring a uniform, just in case things get rowdy.”  
“I think I’ll go alone. Are you bringing someone?”  
“My wife. She likes things like this. She was in a theater troupe in college.”  
“She’s an actor?”  
“No. She majored in biochemistry. Go figure.”

On the evening of the performance, Maria meets them at the precinct, and she, Vanessa, and Gordon all drive over there together. It’s a clear, cold evening, which gives it the feeling of going on a journey. It’s funny how a little change in the atmosphere can make it all seem magical. Maria would say that that’s what theater’s all about. Vanessa looks over her shoulder at Maria, sitting in the backseat, and they smile at each other. Gordon, though, looks like he’s going to his own funeral.  
There are other cars parked in the driveway.  
“I guess they invited friends,” Vanessa says.  
Gordon says nothing.  
The maid lets them in, takes their coats, shows them to the library. The stage is there, its curtains down. The furniture’s been moved out, and chairs, placed before the stage.  
There’s Harvey Bullock, reading the labels on the bottles on the bar cart. Did Gordon just gasp? Vanessa looks at Maria, asks her if she wants a drink.  
“Vodka, tonic?” Maria says, “If there’s no tonic water, just the vodka.”  
At the bar, Harvey looks up with a start. “Captain Bullock,” Vanessa says warmly.  
He recovers. “Please, Harper. I’m a free man, now. Just Harvey.”  
“Harvey,” she says, and shakes his hand. She asks how he’s been, and he tells her that he’s working as a private investigator. “Interesting work,” she says.  
“You don’t know the half of it. So, what are you doing here, with Gordon… and someone I don’t know?”  
“That’s my wife, Maria.”  
“Wife? Good for you. I was almost married once; she came to her senses. I brought the gal who works at my bookie’s.”  
“Bookie, huh?”  
“I stopped drinking, so I have to have some kind of vice. I’m too old to take up smoking, and candy bars just don’t do it for me anymore. Gordon’s free and clear, I see.”  
“Well, he’s not married, and I guess he’s not a gambling man.”  
“Wouldn’t say that,” Harvey mutters. He clears his throat. “So, how do you know these stiffs?”  
“That’s the funny thing. We were here the other day, searching the house for anything to do with Penguin’s licenses. I spoke briefly to Charles van Dahl’s sister. I guess she took a liking to me.”  
“Does your wife know?”  
“The sister’s married, too.”  
“The rich play by different rules,” Harvey says significantly.  
“What about you? How do you know them?”  
“I did some work a couple of months ago for Charles van Dahl. Weird stuff.”  
“Him, or the case?”  
“The case. He’s all right, I guess. Just, you try being normal, growing up in a place like this, going through what he has.”  
“What do you mean by that?”  
Before Harvey can answer her, the maid comes in, and bangs a gong. “Ladies and gentlemen, honored friends,” she says, “Please take your seats. The performance is about to begin.”  
“I’ll talk to you later,” Vanessa says, and gives Maria her drink. They find their seats, Gordon at the end, then Vanessa, then Maria, then Harvey’s date, then Harvey. There are some other people present that Vanessa doesn’t recognize.  
The maid dims the lights, and illuminates the spotlights at the bottom of the stage. She picks up a large piece of cardboard leaning against the side of the stage, and holds up it. Someone in the audience gasps.  
The maid reads aloud the legend on the board, white on black as in a silent film: “The Removal of the Leg, a play in two acts, by Charles van Dahl.”  
She walks to the side, and takes a seat on a stool next to the stage. “This is our setting,” she continues, “a fair kingdom by the sea, known in these times as Gotham. In a strange place, two children grow to adulthood, Charles and Sasha. They live with their mother, Grace, and their mother’s husband, Elijah. In the past, they’ve been known by other names, but they are now Charles and Sasha van Dahl, to correspond with their mother’s most recent, and she hopes, last marriage. As a young man, Elijah was an adventurer, dallying with many young maids of slender means. At some point, he dallied with the cook on his family’s estate. When she was chased from the family home by the young Elijah’s parents, she was already with child. This child grew up to be Oswald Cobblepot, a name from which infamy reeks like perfume.  
“Now, at this time, Oswald is brought low. His crimes and depravity have taken him to that famous place, Arkham Asylum. The amateurs and charlatans who control it have pronounced him sane. By some quirk of circumstance never fully explained, he comes to learn that he is heir to old van Dahl’s vast fortune. That van Dahl has for ten years been husband to Grace and father to Charles and Sasha no longer matters. Oswald is brought to the van Dahl home. When it is learned that Oswald is a criminal hated by all in Gotham, Grace and the children beseech husband and father to turn the villain away. So touched by sentiment is he, though, that he refuses, laughing away their concerns. Would that he had been less moved by tender feeling- for, not long after, Elijah dies. It is quickly determined that the old man died of the natural illness that had plagued him his entire life. Yet, the widow suspects foul play: on the night of his death, Oswald had plied his father with drink, which the elder wasn’t supposed to have, owing to his condition, though it was known that he had loved it in his youth. The death was too quick to have been a simple matter of nature, the widow thinks. At a later date, once the full cycle of grief has run, she will investigate.”  
Vanessa looks at Jim. He’s staring straight ahead, transfixed.  
“Being a criminal in heart and mind, neither wiped clean as one might wipe clean a slate, Oswald is immediately aware that he is suspected. The mind fractured in Arkham begins to reconcile itself, and formulates a hideous plan. It is during the commission of this plan that we look in on the scene...”  
The curtains part. The person in the plague doctor’s mask must be Penn. He wears a black suit with tails, and holds both a meat cleaver and a bottle. Sasha, in the doll-faced mask and a wide-skirted dress with a huge neck ruff, clings to Charles in his sun mask, dressed in gold, also with a ruff.  
“It is you who are the villains,” says Penn, who is obviously supposed to be Oswald, “You who are the murderers. You and your mother- for, if it were not for you, I would be the only kin of old van Dahl, and there would have been no obstacle to my inheriting all. If not for you, I wouldn’t have been driven to these deeds.”  
“Take it, take it all,” says Charles, “We’ll leave. We’ll leave right now.”  
“Just spare our mother, please,” says Sasha, “Just let us stay to tell her that we must depart. Let us wait until she returns, and tell her we must go, and then we’ll go, and you’ll never see us again.”  
“Oh, I have plans for her,” says Penn, “but they don’t involve either of you.”  
“Oh, no,” says Sasha, “Do what you will with us, but spare our mother.”  
“Why spare any, when you are all to blame?”  
“Not us!” says Sasha.  
“Never deny it,” Penn says, “for you have supplied it. This poison, which I found in your very kitchen, seemed to call out to me. It was put there for my use. In some unconscious way, you have courted death. Now, receive it.”  
“No, no,” says Sasha, “You’ve taken our father, but please leave our mother!”  
“And I’ll take more, still. Now,” he waves the cleaver at them, “Which one of you will give up the pound?”  
“But what means he?” Charles asks the audience, “Pound?” He turns back to Penn. “Pound of what?” Sasha has begun to weep.  
“Oh, no,” Maria whispers.  
“I mean,” says Penn, “which one of you will further increase my wealth with some of your own?”  
“In truth,” says Charles, “I don’t know what he means.”  
“I’m going to cut off your leg!” Penn shouts. Sasha screams.  
“Not my sister’s,” says Charles.  
“Then, yours.”  
“Not one of mine, either!” Charles scoffs.  
Someone in the audience laughs, then clears their throat.  
“Yes, it must be. Choose- and quickly!”  
“Then, mine,” says Charles quietly. He lets go of Sasha, and lies down on the table next to him. Sasha holds his hand. “Too tight, sister, too tight; you’ll injure me.”  
Sasha laughs, a thick, wet sound. Behind her mask, she sniffs sharply.  
“On the count of three, then, it must be,” says Penn, raising the cleaver, “One...”  
Maria sucks in a breath, and takes Vanessa’s hand.  
“Three!” bellows Penn, and brings down the cleaver. A fountain of red sprays upward. Sasha screams. Penn picks up the leg, and raises it aloft. It’s clearly a prosthetic leg, but… Jesus. Vanessa glances at Jim. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.  
“Come, brother,” Sasha says, and begins pushing the table away, “While he is distracted, glorying in this violence, let us fly to safety. Our mother will surely perish, and this sorely grieves me, but I cannot fight the villain and save you. May God preserve her. May God help us all!”  
The curtains close. The maid holds up a board that says “End Act I”. After a moment, she holds up a board that says “Act II”. She sits down again, and says:  
“Now that the villain’s done the deed, and others, besides, and has left no evidence in the family home for the police to find, he’s content. He enjoys his life, dreaming of further successes. He fixes his eyes on high office. There’s just one thing he must do before he mounts the steps to power...”  
The curtains part. Penn is holding a paper maché head.  
“What the hell?” Maria whispers. Vanessa looks at Gordon, then at Harvey. Neither gives anything away.  
“This is all that’s left in the world of my enemy, Grace van Dahl,” says Penn, looking at the head, “After killing her, I preserved it, and now use it as a toy and ornament. It gives me pleasure to look upon the evidence of my depravity. Yet, now, I seek the love and favor of the people, so it’s time to put childish things away. I call on my henchman, a villain in his own right, to dispose of this toy, and of the rest of her body, which I concealed from the police at a place far from here.”  
Someone else appears, in a cape and a tragedy mask. When they speak, Vanessa knows that it’s Charles. “What would you have me do?”  
“Take this thing, and destroy it,” he holds out the head, and Charles takes it, “Leave no trace. Destroy the rest of the body, too. Nothing must lead back to me.”  
“I will. But what about the lady’s children? Don’t you fear that they will tell the world what you are and what you’ve done?”  
“No. They fear me, and why should they not? I can tell the world that they and their mother killed van Dahl, and no one can prove otherwise. If I killed their mother, it would be just revenge for what she did. After all, she killed a dying man quickly, with little ado. God only knows the ways in which I made her suffer, and for how long, and then made a mockery of her corpse. Those who wrong me will know that pain ten times over, for in a world of dead heads, the only nerve is mine. If I am pricked, then they must be cleaved in twain to know what only I know.”  
“I will away with the head and body.”  
Penn stands on the stage, preening.  
The maid speaks: “Yet, the wheel of fortune stalls her orbit for no one. Oswald is brought low by his ill deeds, and goes to Arkham, screaming again of treachery and persecution, this time for the murder of a child. Who can know what ill deeds the child may have committed- or, if indeed, there were any. For as we’ve seen, in the villain’s sense, there is no place for innocence.”  
Charles and Sasha come out again. Penn brandishes the cleaver. Charles holds up the head. Sasha turns away, hiding her face in her hands.  
Someone in the audience applauds halfheartedly. Vanessa doesn’t bother to look at Harvey or Gordon. Maria begins to clap. Then, Vanessa does, as well. Finally, everyone claps-  
Yet, the players remain fixed in their poses, unmoving, behind their masks, their true expressions unknown. Unknowable.


End file.
